


the sea is a siren song

by el_vip



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: I have a hundred other things to write but the insp hit hard, Merfolk AU, Mermaid Uma, Multi, Real Pirate Gil, Real Pirate Harry Hook
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-09-06 10:50:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20290249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/el_vip/pseuds/el_vip
Summary: Her mother always warned her not to stray near human ships. Her mother told her the hearts of human men are worth nothing. Her mother always warned her that her own curiosity would be the death of her. Uma's starting to think that she was right.This is a complete AU for the Sea Three in which Uma is an actual mermaid and Harry and Gil are members of Captain James Hook's crew, on an expedition to hunt down a real live mermaid to sell off on the mainland.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> okay so I have unfinished Descendants stuff up but I just got a huge inspo burst for this after watching D3 and having a conversation about the sea three with someone else, so here it is!

Her mother always warned her not to stray near human ships. 

Uma rarely listens to her mother, but she’s starting to think she was right, as she lies there on the floor, tangled in netting, tail slapping uselessly against the wood. 

Her mother told her the hearts of men are worth nothing. 

She believes her now that she’s surrounded by multiple, all staring at her like she’s something alien to them, not that she isn’t. Staring at her like they want to cut her open and sell parts of her off, which they probably do.

She thinks they’re pirates. She’s heard the word before, knows it means the humans who trawl the waters in their boats but don’t obey the laws the humans on land put in place. 

One of them, a tall man with long black hair, a bright red coat and something sharp on his hand steps closer, sneers at her. Uma thrashes harder, the blue-green of her tail flashing in the sunlight as her fins smack into the floor beneath her.

Her lips twist in a snarl, baring sharpened teeth behind them and for a moment he recoils, hesitates in his movement towards her. Then he makes a gesture with his head, and the netting she’s tangled in is pulled, by some burly men on the other side of her, restraining her arms and the tail, stopping her from moving much more than wriggling under the rope. 

It gives him enough apparent courage to step up next to her, lift her head off the floor with a hand in her braided hair and press the sharp thing up against her jaw. It’s hooked metal, and the flash of her eyes down towards it make her realise it’s not in his hand, but it’s part of his hand. 

He skims the curve over her jaw, says something quietly to her in a language she doesn’t understand and she hisses, only understanding it’s something she doesn’t want to hear. Then he drops her again, and she hits the wood with a dull thud, as he turns to the crew behind him, says something again with a grandiose gesture of his arms, something that incites a cheer through the crowd of pirates. 

The same man, who she can only assume is in charge, yells again and gestures towards two of the humans who are hung off to one side with his hooked hand. They glance at each other and start heading towards her. The rest of them disperse, off to different parts of the ship to do whatever it is that makes the thing move, though they make no effort to hide the fact they’re still leering at her.

She hisses again, at the ones that step closer and while it seems to instill some fear in them, they still step up alongside her. 

They’re both tall, broad, one of them all tanned skin and long blond hair, dark eyes that hold the slightest semblance of pity for her as she squirms where she’s trapped, the other pale with a dark shock of hair and eyes so blue they could be holding the sea if not for their lightness. 

They glance nervously at each other again, then she’s lifted off the floor, still bound by the net. She writhes harder underneath it, trying to get away by any desperate means necessary, and the one with dark hair has difficulty keeping hold of her tail until he pulls on the netting and this time her hissing is pained, as it digs into her scales. 

So she tries swiping at the one holding her torso, webbed fingers tipped with sharpened nails flailing aggressively behind her and towards him, though his grip barely loosens despite her efforts. 

They carry her, down into the belly of the ship, down a set of stairs, and as they do, her thrashing weakens, slips off into near complacency. She’s been fighting for a while now, starting when they first tried to drag her out of the water, at least a good hour ago now. 

She can’t tell how long it takes them to get down to where they are - some storage room by the looks of things - but she knows it takes them a while with her. She’s made heavy by the sheer size of her tail and the way she’s been fighting them every step of the way hasn’t helped, regardless of how little effort she’s making now. 

They’ve clearly planned ahead, these pirates. Not very well, but they knew what they were after when they sailed out here, because they drop her into a glass tank filled with saltwater. Though it’s barely a foot high and her tail and her shoulders hang out of either end of it, it’s enough to stop her drying out while she’s outside of the water, and she’ll be able to submerge her gills and breathe when she has to. 

She’s still tired, so she barely manages to claw at the blond one when he steps closer again, after she’s watched them have a brief hostile exchange in their bizarre language. He pulls out something glinting and metal and Uma shrieks, recoils violently as he brings it closer. But he doesn’t raise the blade to her and instead takes his time to cut through the rope of the net that she’s still entwined in. 

She watches him with abject confusion in her dark eyes when she works out what he’s doing, head tilting to follow him when he steps away, pulling the net with him. Her tail flicks a few times, as if testing out its restored freedom. 

Her instincts scream for her to fight, to attack and hurt them, but she’s just watched that one use a knife, and there are who knows how many of them up on the deck. She couldn’t pull her way up there with her tail anyway. Not yet, not in her state.

A growl stays in her throat, doesn’t pass her lips, and she sinks under the water, head beneath the surface of the pitiful amount of breathing space she’s been given. They watch her for a few moments, before they turn on their heels and start making their way up the steps again. 

She’s left in the dark, after the door shuts, staring at nothing but sealed barrels and wood, and the sliver of the sea she can see through the minute window they have in the room. 

She should have listened to her mother. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this is the set up from Harry's perspective now which is hopefully enough to make more sense of the whole thing since there wasn't a whole lot of establishing worldbuilding in the first one. there'll be another one for gil, before it goes into longer chapters with alternating perspectives

Harry’s not sure about this. 

Of course he’s been apt to do whatever his father wanted for his entire life, following the purpose he gives him with some desperate need to please, so that maybe he’d care as much about him as he does about Harriet or even CJ. So he’s been a part of his crew for the better part of a decade, along with Gil, a friend he’s had since they were kids, one he all but forced along with him. 

He’s gone along with whatever his father’s said, followed his wild schemes and his blatant disregard of the law in his piracy, even if he’s renounced him and what he does, to Gil, behind the captain’s back. 

But this… He’s not sure about this time. Raving about the existence of mermaids is not the first sign he’s ever seen of his father having descended into madness, but it’s one of the most obvious, one that makes it more apparent than James Hook just being a man known for his eccentricities. Harry almost made an effort to call him out on it personally but the rage of the man barely softens even for his son, and he seemed convinced that finding one of those ‘mythical she-beasts’ was somehow his life’s great purpose when he’d originally brought it up. 

So he was left complaining to Gil about it again, who just sat there and listened, ever the good sport as he is. 

This was at the beginning of the journey, and they’ve been on the water for three days now. Almost three days. It’ll be three in a few hours, he thinks, since the sun is only just dawning now. They’re drifting in the middle of who knows where and they have been for most of those three days and Harry can already see the morale of the rest of the crew failing them. There’s been nothing. They’re out here doing absolutely nothing. 

That is, until the pirate up in the crow’s nest yells, jabs an arm off to the starboard side of the ship and when Harry, Gil and a handful of others sprint over there, they catch the flash of something bright and turqoise-coloured under the surface of the water, something that could be a fish, if only the somehow still moving lower half of one. 

The man in the crow’s nest yells again, and they dart off to the other side, and this time it’s more clear, when there’s the shape of a human torso attached to that back half of a big fish. 

The crew are on it immediately and Harry barely has time to work out what’s happening on the deck as pirates rush past him to either side, hauling rope and nets overboard, until one of them - Mullins - starts hollering from his position and they’re all over there, to grab onto the net he has a white-knuckled grip on, to pull something heavy and flailing out of the water. 

They throw it into the middle of the boat, when they get it over the side. 

Not it, Harry corrects himself mentally. Her. 

With due respect to the rest of the planet and whatever sea magic has made her, she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in his life. Her tail - it’s actually attached to her - is long and powerful, tipped with fins, the most brilliant blue-green he’s ever seen, the scales glinting in the sun. Her hair is the same colour, if slightly darker, long, all of it in braids that have shells and slivers of actual gold woven into them, and some sort of headpiece of the same shells and gold sits on top of them, almost a facsimile of a crown. 

There’s something dangerous about her too, the dark abyss of her gaze, the well-developed muscles that tense as her body flails about on the deck, the claws that make up the points of her webbed fingers, the angry open and close of the gills that curve around her sides. 

She looks afraid, but she's still fighting despite it and he can admire that. 

None of the crew want to go near her for a beat or two. She’s dangerous, even if she’s trapped, the fangs evident behind her curled lips and the notches her claws cut into the wood every time they catch it only acting as proof of that. But eventually, his father decides to make an example to the crew, steps forwards, makes her wail in pain when they tighten her bonds and when he draws her up off the deck with a hand gripping her hair. He murmurs something to her and Harry feels a twinge of disgust in his gut as the captain runs his hook along the creature’s jaw and leers at her. 

But he still cheers with the rest of the crew, when the man turns around with his hands raised, proclaims that they’ll never have to work again when they sell the she-beast off. 

Then his father gestures at him and Gil and they both know without explanation that they have to deal with her now. They look at each other, exchange something that doesn’t need words and when they step closer to her, neither of them respond much to her attempts to ward them off. Whatever she can do would be nothing compared to what Captain Hook would if they mess this up. 

It’s difficult with her thrashing, for him to get a hold of her tail, until he pulls tight on the net to still her, but he feels a stab of guilt when she hisses in pain again. It’s enough to get a good grip on her though, and so they start carrying her below deck. She’s surprisingly heavy, though considering the size of the tail he has his arms wrapped around, maybe it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. 

They’ve already had a tank prepared for if they should find and catch one of them, so they sling her into that unceremoniously when they get there. She looks pitiful, in barely enough water, barely enough space for her to move. 

Which is probably why Gil, ever the soft heart, turns to him and pulls out his knife. 

“We should take that net off her.” 

Harry almost groans. “No. She needs controlling.”

“But she’s hurting, Harry.”

“So? If she had it her way, we’d be hurt.” 

“Look at her.”

Harry makes the mistake of doing that. Gil’s right. She does look pathetic, such a powerful and beautiful creature hanging over the sides of a container too small for her, her shaky gaze and laboured breaths indicative of how tired the whole thing has left her. 

So he does groan and then he gestures with a hand, head shaking. “Fine.”

Gil doesn’t need any further encouragement to go over and cut the girl free of the net she’s still tangled in, and while she hisses again when he first comes close, she seems more placated, a little confused as she allows him to cut her free. Maybe she is intelligent life after all. 

Harry watches Gil pull the netting away from her when she’s free and then she sinks under the water. He stares at her for a while, a good few moments of meeting her dark, unfathomable gaze and watching the lazy occasional flick of her tail fins. Then he reaches over to nudge Gil’s arm, to pull them both away, and they turn their backs on her and head up the stairs. 

Harry really doesn’t think this is a good idea. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took a while but it's here finally. it remains to be seen how long starting the actual thing will take me oops

Gil has always just done what he’s been told. 

Mostly it’s been Harry ordering him around. He’s the only reason he’s on this ship at all. They’ve been friends since they were children and when Harry hit the right age, he decided to join Hook’s crew to appease him and Gil was all too ready to not be far behind him. He’s been with him the whole time, for years now, listening to his complaints about the Captain, but still there when Harry readily agrees to every one of his dad’s schemes, never calling out the hypocrisy of it all.

Even this time, when for a good while he was sure Harry was going to give in to the urge to curse the captain out to his face for the insane idea of finding a mermaid as if such a thing even existed. 

Gil thinks they could. There are always sailors coming back with stories of seeing them in the distance or catching glimpses of fish too big but too slender to be anything else, even the occasional tale of a man driven mad by a song only he could hear and flinging himself over the side of the ship to find the sirens, only to never be seen or heard from again. The stories about mermaids have always been some of Gil’s favourites to listen to, down at the pubs when they were docked and not out on the waters. 

So he stays ever the optimist while they’re out on the water, disregarding Harry’s grumbling and only nodding along while he complains about anything and everything. Despite the constant spouted hatred for the state of things on the ship, he thinks Harry would make a good seafarer if it wasn’t under the orders of Captain Hook. 

His optimism pays off because lo and behold, they find one. In the early dawning hours as the sun comes up, Mullins up in the crow’s nest - Gil remember sharing food with him once - yells about spotting something and they all flock to one side of the boat to see her, green and blue and shimmering under the surface of the water, a slender human torso melded neatly against the outline of a huge fish. 

Gil’s already awestruck, just from the brief flicker of turquoise.

The feeling intensifies when the pirates who have it in them to actually move fling nets overboard, manage to catch her, start hauling her up on deck. She fights it the whole way up before she’s dragged into the boat’s centre. 

He’s drawn to her instantly, in a way he can’t explain, but by the looks of everyone else’s faces, that seems pretty par for the course. She’s pretty in a general sense. Not in a generic way - she’s clearly anything but - but in the way most girls tend to be, with symmetrical features, slender and toned, but he thinks the otherworldly part of her might be better. 

There’s an unfathomable rage in her impossibly dark eyes, razor-sharp teeth, a power behind each angry flick of her tail and the tense of her muscles. He thinks he understands the stories, now that he’s seen one of them. She looks like power and fury, in a way he’d give his soul for her in order to get near. 

He’s kicked out of the spell she’s trying to drown him - all of them, he has to remind himself - in when the captain starts talking and steps over to her. It takes Gil a few moments to realise his brow is furrowed and his fingers are curled into his fist at his side, and some instinctive part of him wants to protect her. But he restrains himself because the captain is terrifying and Harry wouldn’t live down the embarrassment of his friend being the one to defy orders. 

So Gil does as he’s told, as always, lifts the mermaid’s upper body when he’s told to move it with Harry, ignores the catch of one of her claws against his skin. Though, he does take a moment to hope that she’s not got some sort of poison coating them that’ll slowly eat him away. Or even some sort of horrible deep sea disease. It only stings and beads a few drops of blood for a moment, at least.

They get her below deck and slip her into the ready-made metal-framed tank, that’s already been filled with seawater as an act of forethought by the captain and Gil hates it immediately. He hates seeing her in such total distress, in such a small space. 

So he pulls out his knife and glances at Harry. “We should take that net off her.”

“No. She needs controlling.” Harry looks torn, he thinks. He doesn’t sound sure, at least. 

Gil’s brow furrows. That doesn’t sound morally right, to him, but he supposes for the sake of what they’re doing it could be. Still, it doesn’t sit well with him. “But she’s hurting, Harry.”

He watches as something flickers in Harry’s bright eyes and then his expression hardens. “So? If she had it her way, we’d be hurt.” 

Gil takes his time to consider that. Harry’s right and it’s obvious when he feels the slight sting of her claw marks on his bicep. At least, it seems that way for a moment, until he thinks that maybe it’s not, actually. They’ve pulled her out of the water, out of her home and put her somewhere out of her element, and he’s pretty sure none of them have been particularly nice to her at all. He glances over at where she’s pitifully flicking her tail in and out of the water. “Look at her.”

Harry does what he says - a rarity - and Gil sees his profile soften for just a second and knows he’s won. It makes him even happier for just a few moments when Harry grumbles his approval, though it doesn’t last when he steps closer. She’s still angry. 

She’s tired though, so it doesn’t take a lot of effort on his part to placate her and keep her from scratching at him again while he cuts the net off her and then pulls it away. She catches his gaze as he does, and there’s something in her dark eyes, some small, bright spark that seems almost grateful, just for a moment. 

He’s still revelling in it a few moments later, in the brief light he’s been graced with when Harry nudges him and gestures for them to leave.

He looks back, just the once. He hopes she’ll forgive them for this.


End file.
